Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 78 The Vast River

In the vast deep space, the huge cargo box gradually disappeared.

At this moment, at the starting point of the 30-kilometer-long railway built on a gentle slope on Enemy Star, another cargo box was ready for ejection.

At the same time, in the port of this catapult base, products from tens of thousands of factories across the entire Enemy Star are pouring in on trains.

After completing the transfer at the port, they were sorted and loaded into standard containers. These standard containers were then lined up at the starting point of the catapult track and fixed to the catapult vehicle, ready for launch.

So, one cargo box after another was ejected into space, and then completed subsequent acceleration under the automatic control of the traffic AI, and was thrown onto the route to Luoshen.

On average, a standard cargo container is ejected every half hour.

Assuming that the average mass of a cargo container is 1500 tons, this catapult alone can launch about 2500 million tons of cargo every year.

Li Qingsong built a total of 20 such catapults next to various industrial clusters on the enemy star based on the principle of convenient transportation!
An average of 5 million tons of cargo can be launched every year!

This is enough to fully meet the transportation needs between Enemy Star and Luoshen Star.

"Although this method is good, it consumes a lot of electricity..."

Looking at the No. 1 catapult that had already started operating, Li Qingsong sighed silently in his heart.

Accelerating a standard cargo box of standard weight from zero to 800 meters per second requires a total of 4.8*10^11 joules of energy.

Converted into electricity, it is 13.3 kWh.

But it's obviously impossible to convert 50% of electrical energy into kinetic energy, as there are losses. For example, the conversion efficiency of this catapult is only about %.

Therefore, it takes about 26 kilowatt-hours of electricity to launch a cargo box.

Launching 48 cargo containers a day consumes 1248 million kWh of electricity! Adding in other losses, the daily power consumption of this launch base alone is as high as 1300 million kWh.

This requires a power plant with an installed capacity of approximately 55 kilowatts to work 24 hours a day and at full capacity to meet the needs of this catapult base.

But in fact, high power consumption is not the main problem.

The main problem is that so much electricity is not released smoothly, but concentrated in a short period of time.

It takes about 80 seconds to eject a cargo box, during which 80 kWh of electricity is released.

每个弹射周期为30分钟，1800秒。这1800秒除去这80秒的1720秒时间里，电力消耗又会陷入谷底。

Such huge power fluctuations are the biggest technical challenge in building this catapult base.

But for Li Qingsong, solving this problem was only slightly complicated and not too difficult.

The reason is simple, he has 20 catapult bases!
In this way, it is only necessary to stagger the ejection time of different ejection bases to achieve the effect that there is always a cargo box in the ejection stage in each time period, so that the power consumption is stabilized.

It’s okay if there are some rough patches occasionally.

Li Qingsong's overall industrial plate is large enough, with tens of thousands of factories. How much electricity does it consume each year? The overall power consumption is high enough, so the power grid must be strong enough.

Since the power grid is strong, the impact of this fluctuation and load on the power grid can be reduced to the lowest point and is completely tolerable.

Similarly, Li Qingsong still delegated the complexities of power dispatching, such as determining the output of each power plant and whether to increase or decrease power, to the power AI. The power industry clones still only performed supervisory, maintenance, and decision-making duties.

At this moment, after building these 20 catapult bases, Li Qingsong completed all construction tasks on the enemy star.

In the future, you won’t need to put in much effort here, and a steady stream of resources will automatically come to you.

In just a few days, thousands of cargo boxes, totaling millions of tons of goods, have embarked on the journey to Luoshen.

"It's time to go back."

At a command, half of the 330 million clones originally brought to the enemy planet were evacuated and returned to the huge cargo spacecraft.

When they arrived, these cargo ships were loaded with equipment needed for construction.

When returning, the spacecraft was filled with various resources produced on the enemy planet.

After several months, the huge fleet finally returned to Luoshen Star, and there was finally no delay between Li Qingsong and the clones.

No delays mean that some time-sensitive and complex tasks can finally begin.

"You've rested for so long, haven't you? Let's get back to work!"

Under Li Qingsong's order, the massive construction began again.

A brand new research base, more advanced research equipment, intelligent upgrades to the factory, and so on.

But at this stage, Li Qingsong's construction work is always somewhat restricted and he cannot give his full effort, and the progress of the project is also somewhat slow.

It’s because the local resource output on Luoshen Star is insufficient.

But it doesn’t matter, the resource supplies from the enemy planet will arrive soon.

While carrying out the preliminary preparations, Li Qingsong was eagerly waiting.

A year passed slowly. Finally, amidst Li Qingsong's agonizing anticipation, the first cargo box finally arrived at Luoshen. Without any external intervention, it accurately entered Luoshen's orbit and began to orbit the planet!
At this point, the work becomes simple. It is nothing more than sending some special deceleration thrusters to attach to the cargo box to slow it down, and then transport it to the port of Luoshen.

The first cargo box slowly landed at the port. After being unpacked, the boxes were recycled—they themselves became part of the cargo. The over a thousand tons of preliminarily refined oxygen ore inside were quickly loaded onto a train, which roared to the factory.

After the first box, there was the second, the third...

Box after box of oxygen ore, methane ore, steel, aluminum ingots, copper ingots, rare earth elements, castings, primary chips, lubricating oil, starch...

These cargo boxes flowed onto Luoshen like a vast river, bringing vitality back to many factories that had been thirsty due to the dried-up river.

The resource depletion crisis Li Qingsong faced was finally resolved at this moment. The various projects that had been restricted, unable to fully operate and conduct research, and temporarily slowed down, were finally freed.

"Finally, I can once again devote my full attention to advancing science and technology."

Li Qingsong sighed silently: "Then... it's time to start the research and development of the second-level battleship, that is, the gold-class battleship!"

(End of this chapter)